The 10 Biggest Web Technologies Every Developer Should Know

The World Wide Web has metamorphosed over the time from its inception and technology has been its vehicle to improvement. Given the availability of limitless resources and the constant competition to come up with better websites has made the job of a web developer much more difficult and challenging. Take for instance, the success story of YouTube. While other similar sites failed before, YouTube took the road to success riding on the Adobe Flash player technology.

They key takeaway from these developments is the fact that the only game changer for the web today is proper utilization of tech advancements and path breaking graphic user interface (GUI). But to be able to exploit the web technology advancements and to keep up with the latest user interface trends, web developers and web development companies have to be a master of all the upcoming and advanced technologies.

While there is no end to what you can learn, if you are passionate about web technologies, there are few technologies that any modern web developer simply cannot ignore. Here are 10 such technology areas.

1. Browsers

Web browsers are tools that create an easy to use interface between commands by the user and the results returned by the web servers in form of relevant web pages. Commonly used web browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet explorer etc. Each one of these offer varied functions to their users all of which should be mastered by every developer to make sure how his designed website is responding to different browsers. Cross browser compatibility is one of the most basic requirements of a website today. Users are more adept at using various modern browsers today. Internet Chrome is not the default option anymore. Nor is Firefox. Though developers continue to use Firefox as the standard browser, Chrome has more user base than any other browser.

2. HTML5

The main markup language since the very beginning, HTML provides structure of a website so that web browsers know what to show. With every version, HTML comes up with better range of capabilities. HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and is obviously the best till now. HTML5 had been able to bypass the problem of media plug-ins along with an array of useful functions and features. Acceptability of HTML5 across various platforms including major web browsers and mobile devices makes it an important technology which every web developer should master. HTML5 has made flash redundant and made it super easy to use video content natively in HTML.

3. CSS3

CSS3 is the latest version of Cascading Style Sheets which offers an assortment of features that determine how your web properties look – from colors, shapes to various animation and shadow effects. It has lessened the dependence on javascript and other web elements that were vulnerable to bugs, were time consuming to develop, and mostly not compatible across browsers. Web developers today are using CSS3 more and more in conjunction with HTML5 to create web properties that are less dependent on scripts.

4. Programming Languages

Programming languages are used to write the code. All languages have their own syntax and logic. Some, like PHP are more widely used than others. To survive the throat cutting competition, web developers must be efficient in using and understanding different programming languages. Some of these languages popular on different frameworks include Javascript, Python, Coffeescript, Ruby, Java, PHP, Go, Objective-C, etc.

5. Responsive web designs

With increased use of multiple devices to access the web, flexi or responsive web designing concept has become immensely pertinent. Today responsive designs make it possible for us to view web page across various platforms with ease, where the matter adjusts itself in length and width for better viewer experience. For flexible view of any portal on various devices, a developer must excel in developing responsive web designs.

6. Databases

Proper organization of data in digital format is what we know as Database. There are two types of digital databases namely SQL and NoSQL. The structure of SQL is tailored to make sure that all the data is correct and validated while NoSQL provides more flexibility for the building and maintenance of applications. Proficient knowledge of various databases like MongoDB, Redis, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, etc. is a must for every web developer.

7. Frameworks

Frameworks are built to facilitate the development of proficient and dynamic websites, web applications and mobile applications. Working on various programming languages becomes much easier with the aid of these frameworks as you don’t have to start from scratch. The entire complicated and repetitive task is reduced by promoting code reuse for activities like database access, session management, etc. Some of the more popular frameworks that every web developer should master include CMS frameworks like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal; ecommerce frameworks like Magento, Prestashop; PHP frameworks like CakePHP, Zend Framework; Microsoft frameworks like ASP.NET, SharePoint;

8. Protocols

Protocols are a set of instructions on how computers and devices communicate with each other and process information. For example HTTP protocol works on how a website gets to the browser. It requests the server for the website and gets response with the HTML, CSS, or Javascript of the website. A comparatively newer protocol, DDP, creates a continuous connection between the client and the server where websites update without even refreshing the browser. Another protocol called REST is majorly used for APIs and uses standard methods to exchange information between various applications. It is very important for any web developer to be well informed about the technology behind these protocols.

9. API

An application programming interface or API is created by the developer of an application to allow the usage of some of its functionalities to a third party app or website without sharing the code. This makes it possible to combine multiple APIs to create new applications. APIs allows sharing of data between various web applications. Hence, a web developer should master the technology of creating good APIs. All the popular web and mobile apps today come with their own APIs that help integrate the app with various other services.

10. Data Formats

The organization and storage of data in the databases, according to their particular specifications, is defined by structures called Data Formats. When we talk of web development, JSON is leading the market as the most popular data format. XMS continues to be in use since the time web development was introduced. XMS format was used mainly by Microsoft. The format which is used in excel is the CSV format, which every web developer should be able to work with. Here, the formatting of the data is done using commas.

Everyone Should Know About Advantages And Disadvantages Of Open Source Crm System

A CRM or customer relationship management system facilitates developing and upholding meaningful relationships with the customer. Every company whether big or small can benefit from a well developed CRM system. But quite often the prohibitive cost of enterprise grade CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce.com) takes them beyond the reach of majority of the organizations as only a handful of companies with deep pockets can afford such advanced, feature rich systems.

But the scenario started changing with the launch of SugarCRM, the first major open source CRM system. SugarCRM democratized the CRM market. Even in its earliest versions Sugar was a decent system with useful features and freely available code. What this meant was you can have your own CRM system with as many users as you want and you can customize the system to suit whatever your organizational requirement was. The software was free, you just had to invest in the server infrastructure. But it was a one time investment and totally worth it considering the business benefits. Eventually Sugar ceased to be an open source software, but what it started was quickly followed by other CRM developers and now after more than a decade we have almost a dozen good open source CRMs to choose from.

But is free software the only reason why you should go for open source CRM software. And what’s the flipside? What compromises you will have to make with open source CRM. Here is a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of open source CRM software, so when you do decide to go for one, you take an informed decision.

Advantages of Open Source CRM

Free of Cost

The foremost reason why everyone considers opting for open source CRM is because, generally speaking, its free. Off course not all open software are free, but most CRM systems are. The source code is free which can be modified according to the requirements. New versions are offered time to time that too at no extra cost. The developer might charge some additional money for expert support but you can always save some money by modifying the codes yourself and saving on the license charges. It has been estimated that open source software saves around $60 billion a year for all businesses combined.

Customization

Anything that is customizable according to one’s requirements is a good thing. Especially a CRM software, because CRM deals with managing customers and customer management differs vastly from industry to industry. So it is very difficult to build a one-size-fits-all CRM software, unless you stuff it with all the features all industries will ever need. The power to customize makes open source CRM among the most sought-after software. The source code can be altered to whatever the user needs it to be. They need not have to deal with (and pay for) loads of irrelevant features which they will never use. And if can’t customize yourself you can always hire CRM customization services.

No ‘stuck-up’

Usually when you opt for paid CRMs, not only do you have to pay an initial cost, but need to commit to the license for at least a number of months. Open source CRM does not need that kind of commitment. You can use it till whenever it is suitable to you and drop it if it’s not working any longer.

Easy Management

Open source CRM is easy to manage and can be installed at multiple locations according to your requirements. You don’t need to keep a count or monitor it for license issues. You can keep as many instances of the software as you want without any monetary repercussions.

Continuous Improvements

Another great reason to go for open source CRM is the developer community behind it. Everyone has access to the source code so it is possible for anyone to fix bugs, if any, and add new features using collective experience. As a result the software keeps getting better and better as time passes by.

Resources

You do not need to exploit as much resources for the implementation of the system as is required in the traditional software(s). Your staff can explore the existing codes to understand the product better and can suggest various improvements which might suit your organization best.

So, these were some of the advantages of open source CRM which attracts you to consider it. But that’s not all. Every coin has two sides. Before deciding on anything, you need to be equipped with both its pros and cons. Now talking about disadvantages, let’s see why opting for an open source CRM needs consideration:

Disadvantages of Open Source CRM

Maintenance

Installing open source CRM can be easy, but CRM support and maintenance is not. The proper up keeping of open source CRM requires a lot of technical expertise. Little thought is provided to develop the user interface so they aren’t that user-friendly. You will need consultants and expertise to choose and customize the right CRM for you. The bugs can be resolved but generally take a lot of time for the same.

No central support system

There is no one place where you can go with the issues you are facing regarding your open source CRM. All of your solutions or support is going to be from various forums (community of users) which aren’t always accurate and can take a lot of time to respond to your queries. The other way is to get expert support which again adds to your expenses.

Limited Functionality

Open source CRM can almost cater to all the basic needs of your business, but it might not suit your business if you are looking for full fledged CRM solution. The functionality of open source CRM is limited to an extent and comes with its own shortcomings. However with additional investment you can either hire CRM developers to add new features or get readymade plugins for your unique requirements.

Not entirely free

Though it may seem to be, open source CRM is not entirely free. There are many hidden costs which keep on showing up. The source code is available to all but to alter the code according to your own requirements, you will have to incur developer costs and continuous upkeep costs. To run the CRM system you will need to invest in server and firewall infrastructure which may cost a huge amount of money.

Conclusion

Even with its limitations open source CRM is still preferred by many businesses to enhance their relationship with customers. Most certainly, open source software is one of the major trends in the software industry and it’s not for nothing. In spite of all arguments, to opt for it or not is entirely a decision based on the requirements of a business or entity. Therefore, if you are looking forward to decide on open source CRM for your organization, you must study all its advantages and disadvantages carefully to see if the advantages are more profitable to you or the limitations are bound to bring in more loses.

Why Have A Mobile Apps Reducing Time Spent On Mobile Web?

Smartphones are handy, easy to use and carry along, and can now perform most of the major functions which earlier only personal computers and laptops could offer. That’s the every reason people are spending more time using their cell phones. What do they do all the time glued to their phones? It has been found that now people are spending more and more time using mobile apps rather than the web, when using their mobile phones. Is it any wonder that mobile app development is one of the hottest professions around?

App Surfing Replacing Web Surfing

Studies have found that mobile consumers spend around 85% of their mobile time on mobile apps. Techcrunch.com states that out of this time, 84% is spent on just five apps downloaded from the app store. These top five apps vary from person to person depending on their interests whether it is gaming, social media, instant messaging, or e-commerce. Facebook, Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, Whats app, Apple, are a few among the applications which are used most by people all over.

With an estimate of 66% of the digital time being spent on mobile devices, and a major part of it being spent on mobile apps, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that “the app has become the dominant form of media in our time”, as stated by arc.applause.com. And it’s not forecasted to stop anytime soon. The percentage of app users is growing significantly year by year.

Why Mobile Apps Are Becoming Dominant

Ease of Use

Ease of use is one of the key reasons why apps have become so popular. With smaller screens, it’s much easier to use these apps specially designed for mobile use rather than to surf the web even with responsive websites dominating today’s web. Mobile applications has everything sorted out within the mobile screen with important icons placed smartly while surfing the web need zooming in efforts, not to forget the opening and closing of so many pages to do a small task.

Ease of Task Continuity

Other than that, there’s something more important that drives users to mobile applications. When they are using these apps, everything is sorted out in their devices. They can look at it and continue anytime; while saving of web pages is an obscure task. For example, if a customer is going through an ecommerce app and they like something they don’t want to buy immediately, they can just save it for later. As they are always logged in there, next time they open the app, they can easily reach the saved product and order it according to convenience. The same task on a web browser takes many efforts. You need to open the web page of the particular e-commerce, log in, and save, and again follow the same to look into your saved items.

Convenience and Connectivity

The increasing usage of apps is not only reducing the time spent on mobile web but on desktops as well. As people like to do everything on the go, they rarely leave something to be done on desktops except their official work.

The availability of internet is another issue that’s promoting the increased usage of mobile applications. While people have working internet all the time on their mobile phones, they consider it cumbersome to connect their PCs to a network. Also, the applications load much faster than web pages. From a teenagers to retired old men, everyone possesses a smartphone these days. But the same can’t be said for desktops or laptops. These are limited to only those who need it for professional/educational purposes.

To Conclude

From all the above reasons and statistics it can be concluded rightly that digital usage is gradually moving towards the use of mobile apps. It seems to be the need of the hour for businesses based online to buckle up and plunge into the app market to make sure their businesses do not suffer given the escalating trend of mobile applications.

7 Facts Everyone Should Know About Why Web Designers Are And Will Always Be In Demand

Web designing as a profession, has got a significant boost in the recent years, thanks to the explosion in the number of websites that are getting launched everyday, globally. But like all demands, will the demand for web designers will also subside. Maybe, someday. But not anytime soon. And even if the demand subsides and web designing isn’t a cool profession anymore, there will always be demand for quality and experienced web designers and web designing companies. Because new websites (or something similar) will always be build for new businesses.

Let’s have a quick look at the top 7 reasons why web designers are currently in demand and will always be so in the future.

1. Ever Expanding Industry

Looking at the statistics of the past few years, it can be easily concluded that mostly every industry has an online interface in the present era. Industries are as active online as they were in brick and mortar a few years back. When everyone one is moving towards a web interface, it is inevitable that the websites need to be designed by experts for unavoidable reasons. Hence the requirement for web designers can be forecasted to be growing day by day.

2. Web Knowledge Development

Web designers are designing web graphics and are actively developing strategies for web based advertisements and sales expansion for organizations. Since web designers have a close association and understanding of working of the web based systems, they are always in demand, providing expert consultation towards developing and providing solutions to web based business models. For example, the free online education platforms like Khan Academy who is now in partnership with Tata for developing an online learning interface based on NCERT for Indian students or Coursera collaborating with various Universities of international fame to launch their online courses.

3. Innovation and Technology

New web page making softwares like Page Cloud, wix and the likes where creating a web page is as easy as editing a picture on Photoshop. For long web designing has been a domain of experts who have in-depth knowledge of computer languages, a situation very similar to primitive computers where knowledge of command language to operate them was necessary. However, a GUI helped people without technical knowledge of computer languages become good computer users where backend programmes were written so that computer could understand commands in English language inputs.

Same thing is happening with web designing. Programmes are being written to make the user interface simpler for web designers without knowledge of computer languages, keeping in mind that huge influx of demand in this area with ever expanding web service users. It would also lead to better individual control over their web properties.

4. Esthetic Web Pages for attracting Customers

Better looking web pages attract more customers. If the web content is relevant along with creative web graphics design, it generates customer loyalty. Today glamorous web pages are in fashion and are needed to generate competitive advantage over hoards of similar websites over the internet. It helps websites to stand out from the clutter of hundreds of similar pages. So web esthetics today is a big selling point for better performing web designers.

5. Huge Increase in Web Based Entrepreneurial Ventures

Increase of entrepreneurs from non-IT background who are developing more and more of web based organizations or product selling models. For example, Amazon, which was initially a virtual organization without any brick and mortar outlets. The whole business model is based on neatly designed websites and apps by web designers and the maximum business conversion capability of these organizations depends on the glitch free running of these web pages and web applications along with the rate of web user penetration for the organization. Now we have virtual organizations and other hybrid models that heavily depend on their web base services and applications like ebay, shaadi.com, alibaba.com, flipkart .com, the aviation industry, continuing to a very long and exhaustive list. And it is not going to stop anytime soon. So, there will always be demand for web-designers.

6. Government Interest

Government is interested in generating web based information systems for hassle free transactions, payment of various bills, fairer disbursements of government aids to people who actually are entitled to such claim like those who belong to the BPL category claiming cooking gas subsidies, eliminate middlemen as in IRCTC, Passport, DL etc. having a central data source as in ADHAR will ensure fairer government disbursements. Making web based applications like Income tax payment portal, online cooking gas booking portal, online banking portal, telephone bill payment portal etc. All such endeavors would require more and more web developers for building and maintaining such web pages and applications for smooth functioning of various government departments and private service providing companies. Online data excavation would also be a time and labor saving process that in many cases would lead to prompt action of the legal and justice system of the country. Therefore, to manage all this at a large scale, the demand for web-designers will consistently be on rise.

7. Research & Development

More research and development investments in multidisciplinary aspect of web designing is needed to prevent unscrupulous people from developing fishing websites, hackers and other frauds since today we all bank online. Web developers are the people who are constantly working in this area and have the qualities to become champions for smooth functioning of day to day working of companies and government agencies through constant firewalling and online protection through updating of virus definitions and protection of online data. Web developers and designers, thus, seem to be moving towards a bright job future with the big bang of online data.

6 Tips To Grow Your Email Marketing To Boost Ecommerce Sales

The success rate of an ecommerce business depends largely on the marketing techniques being practiced by the company. Of all the popular marketing techniques, email marketing has often been found to be the second most effective marketing channel for e-commerce businesses. But this piece of information is not enough for the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy. It’s been more than two decades that we have the option of e-mailing but today we can personalize it to a significant scale. And it totally depends on how well we are utilizing this leverage and convert the humble email into a powerful marketing weapon.

Let’s have a brief look at the most effective ways in which you can use email marketing to boost ecommerce sales.

1. Customer Relationship Management

Though customer relationship is a much broader term, what we really need to study for efficient email marketing is the customer lifecycle or the different stages in which the customer is in relationship with the seller. Sending out generic emails to all customers barely does the trick. So, you have to personalize the mails according to their life cycle.

A. Abandoned Carts

Potential customers need an extra bit of attention from your end. There are probabilities that a significant part of these customers will abandon the carts after selecting the products of their choice. At this point, you are to study the pattern of abandonment and take steps accordingly. Within half an hour of the abandonment of a cart, a mail should reach them assuring that you are providing quality customer service. The e-mail should be prompting enough to urge them to revert back with their grievances. Even if there is no check out, you would know the shortcomings that led the customer to back out and take measures to fix it at the earliest. You should try at least 2-3 e-mails at appropriate time intervals to convert the abandoned carts into customers.

B. New Customers

An ecommerce business should immediately follow up with a new customer. A welcome mail is mandatory. You should also provide the links of social media portals where they can stay connected with you and get updates about new products and offers. One thing which is really important and should be included in the mail is the story of your business. That definitely helps in establishing a branding with the customer. Further, you can offer discounts for their next purchase and keep them updated about the products they might be interested in.

C. Existing Customers

There should an efficient e-mail campaign for the existing and returning customers. You can send promotion mails which also ask for a feedback and reflects how important their feedback is for you. For your regular customers, there should be a VIP campaign. Meaning, they should get a special treatment now and then. These can be the customers who purchased the most in the last month or have purchased three (or more) times. Let them know that they are one of your best customers and treat them with a discount or free shipping now and then.

D. Previous Customers

These are the customers who didn’t show any purchasing signs since a long time. You can try sending out a polite mail stating that they are missed or work on strategy e-mails to call them back. Study their purchase history and persuade them to check out the latest products which you have for them. You can also provide some incentives to call them back.

2. Reminders

You should always refer to your customer’s purchase list while customizing emails for them. For the products which need replenishments, you can send out reminders to your customers to stock their essentials. It can be beauty products like soap, shampoo, etc, or food essentials like oil, spices, and other home vitals. If someone has a purchase cycle of a month for such products, the e-commerce business should study the pattern and send a marketing e-mail when you can predict the supply might be coming to an end. The mail should be inviting and promoting similar products to the purchase history of the consumer.

3. Product Reviews

Provide incentives to your customers to reply to the feedback mails. Make sure to directly link it to the review section of the product bought by them. A product with reviews definitely gets more preference than the other with no reviews. So you can make your marketing emails a way to lure the customers to leave a review for the product they have purchased.

4. Customize Transactional Emails

The chances of opening a transactional e-mail are around 21% while it stands to only 3% for bulk promotional mails. Optimally utilize the information by promoting your products in the transactional mails. Whenever a customer opens a transactional email, there should be a catchy link that directs him to similar products on the website. You can also try showcasing some handpicked items in the mail, which might be alluring to the prospective customer.

5. E-mail Campaigns on Birthdays and Anniversaries

When a customer signs up as a member, maintain a database of the information about the important dates in their life. It can be their birthday, their spouse’s’ birthday, or their wedding anniversary. Make sure to provide some incentives to your customers on these particular dates. Send an e-mail a few days before along with the expiry date of the offer. You can be selective about the incentives; it can be a ‘free shipping’ thing or a certain percentage off on any particular products (that’s relevant to the specific buyer.)

6. Say no to ‘no-reply’ mails

Many of the e-commerce firms follow a pattern of automated mails where the customer cannot get back to the seller. That’s a strict no. You should always be open to customer enquiries and feedbacks. Keep this platform open and let your customer get in touch with you hassle free by sending the marketing emails from a personalized e-mail id where they can reply back.

The above are some of the basic things you can do to use your e-mail marketing to boost sales. Off course these will be effective only once you have taken care of all the ecommerce storefront development requirements and optimized your store for conversion. There are innumerable innovative ways in which you can call back your existing customers or allure some new ones. You just need to study the patterns and work a bit more when it comes to e-mails.

The 7 Best Things About Wordpress Website Maintenance

Keeping your WordPress website well maintained gives you a great sense of accomplishment. But it would require you to take care of many aspects of your website, some of them easy to accomplish, some of them not so, due to their technical nature. However you wouldn’t know what to fix if you don’t know it’s broken. So today, we will talk about the various elements of your WordPress that you need to take care of, to keep it in top shape.

This blog post is mainly a handy guide to WordPress website maintenance. Implementing these best practices and tips is guaranteed to keep both search engines and visitors happier.

1. Get Backup Of Your Website Often

It is one of the most important tasks that you are supposed to do regularly, and one of the most ignored one. Even though backing up does not keep your website clean and fresh, this helps if some trouble arises. So, always have backup of your WordPress website on a monthly basis. Not only this, you can also backup daily blogs, weekly news, etc. – these are good for corporate websites. You can take a backup of your website through hosting provider or by downloading local copies of your website through FTP. WordPress plugins marketplace has numerous plugins that automatically backup your website completely. If you don’t find any plugin you can get your own custom wordpress plugin developed.

2. Keep Your Website Updated

If you are keen to maintain your WordPress website, you must update it from core. You should update installed themes, Plugins – their latest versions regularly. Luckily, WordPress brings out its latest version often to offer their users more advanced features & security fixes. What you need to do is, login to your WP site at regular intervals and update WP Plugins, themes and core WordPress files.

3. Eliminate Unused Plugins

WordPress Plugins are an ideal way to enhance functionality of WP site. But using them excessively may affect the performance as well as the security of a website itself. If you aim to have successful website, you need to delete Plugins which you have not used so far and most likely will not use in future too. You basically have to turn off the plugins and then delete them; But before you delete any plugin, take a closer look at all the plugins to see which ones you are using and which ones you aren’t.

4. Optimize Your Database

Database is where all your website content is stored. This includes blogs, images, videos, pages, settings and many things. As your website grows, your database begins to get stuffed, which in turn slows down the website’s speed. If you want to enhance your website’s performance, then you need to optimize your database. Using plugins, you can easily optimize the database of your website and improve its speed. Using a combination of different plugins you will be able to remove spam comments, unwanted posts, unwanted post revisions, etc. You can use plugins to also optimize the underlying MYSQL database tables.

5. Focus On Your WordPress Security

Majority of WP users overlook the security factor of their website. Security is one of the central factors which needs to be taken care of. If you want to safeguard your website from other security threats and hackers, you need to install reliable WP Plugins that can protect your website from malware or virus. Apart from these there are some security best practices that you should follow – delete the user account with the default username “admin” and create a new admin account with a unique username, keep the password strong with a combination of capital and small letters, numbers and special characters, limit login attempts for users to avoid brute force attack, keep all the plugins and themes always updates, etc

6. Keep A Check On Your Website Speed

If you aim to attract more visitors, you must provide them fast loading pages. It is a wll known SEO fact now that the website speed directly affects the rankings of your website on search engines. Fortunately, there is Google’s PageSpeed insight which offers a tool to grade your site’s load time and then offers tips to augment it. You can use this tool to find out your website’s speed and improve the speed using the recommendations provided.

7. Manage Website Content Regularly

Updating and managing content is very easy with WordPress; after all it is a Content Management System. You have to create content on your own, share it with your target audiences and engage with people who are commenting and reading it. Three key elements you need to think about are, 1) Publishing regularly 2) Sharing Content 3) Managing subscribers & comments. By taking care of these three points, you will be able to encourage your audiences to come back regularly.

Conclusion

As you can see from the above points, WordPress maintenance does not need to be tricky or time consuming. Follow some of the maintenance best practices and use plugins judiciously wherever you have to. But no matter how you do it, please make sure that you take care of the above points as best as you can to avoid the shock of one day finding that your website has been hacked by some hacker group and you don’t even have a backup of your old site!

7 Easy Steps To More User Experience For Ecommerce Success Sales

One of the biggest challenges in the ecommerce industry is converting casual website visitors into paying customers. And whether customers will pay for your products depends not just on the quality of the products but also on the the way the products are presented. Excellent presentation increases the perceived value of the products and makes them more desirable in the eyes of your customers.

User experience (UI) design is all about presenting your products in the best possible way, to maximize their chances of being sold. Excellent user experience makes your customers come back to your store again and again. Given below are some important user experience best practices that you must follow to increase your store’s conversion rates and acquire more paying and loyal customers.

1. Don’t Make Your Customers Wait To View Your Website

Nothing gets your website visitors to bounce off it faster than slow loading web pages. Slower page loading is directly proportional to fall in conversion rates. Be it a small size store, or a big one, your visitors would not wait for more than 3-5 seconds. And making them wait longer is a surefire way to make them switch to your competitors. For fast load times and smooth checkout experience, you can trim down your code. Also compress image sizes, since larger image takes a lot of time to load. Use responsive design that adapts the designs of your website to look best on all devices.

2. Understand How Customers Read Information

To understand your customers better, you should put the most important parts of website pages across the top and down the left-hand side. Normally, visitors scan web pages in “F’ pattern. So bring their attention to headlines, headers by creating an appropriate ecommerce design.

3. Make It Easy To Find Your Products

For this, you need to create an algorithm driven system that shows most relevant products to customers when they visit your website based on their account preferences, product search history, and items previously purchased or added to cart. Predictive analytics is the next big thing in ecommerce and personalized product recommendations and personalized layouts based on predictive analytics will drive the future ecommerce stores.

4. Simplify Products’ Page Layouts

Experts say that, “Keep layouts as clean and sleek as possible.” Place the fundamentals – product code, price, brief description, size/color options, photo/video gallery in the right place. Also consider simplifying reviews, ratings and shipping options – all in a simple and clean layout.

5. Keep Color Focused & Under Control

Colors are a great tool to evoke emotions and put emphasis on something. However, the usage of too many colors might make the design confusing and unmemorable. So, always try to limit color options and limited color variations. Use your brand colors along with various shades and be consistent throughout the website. The more colors you use in your website, the more off putting it may appear to your viewers. Also, ensure the color palettes match your offerings. Keep a contrast between the texts and background so that people can differentiate both.

6. Ensure Text Is Large (Readable)

Ever thought that the typography of your website can have an impact on your conversion rates? If no then it’s time you did. Text on your website must be easily readable. Ensure they are large, clean and sharp with proper line spacing. Don’t forget that, the easier it is to read your content, the more likely customers will do so and the more likely they will get the information they require and will purchase from your store.

7. Use High Quality Images & Videos

Informative and quality images and videos matter a lot when it comes to providing a better user experience. You can display a range of images on your store, specially product images. The more information you provide, the easier it is for your customers to say “Yes, We want this.”! High quality videos and images give an exact idea about what you are offering to them.

Wrapping Up

The effectiveness of the above best practices depend on how best you implement them. But you will be able to identify the ideal way of doing things only if you try them out and experiment with different options (A/B tests) to see which option works best for you. What other UX best practices you think should be incorporated in any online store? Leave your views in the comments below.

CMS vs Static Website: Which One Should You Choose

One of the most important decisions to make before having your website developed is whether to a CMS based dynamic website or static website. It is a common question business owners and individuals face every time they decide to make a website. Even though CMSs like WordPress are very popular today, static websites also have their own benefits and use. Let’s take a detailed look at what these are and which one you should prefer for your next website project.

What is a Static Website?

Static website is developed from the ground up, written in code – CSS3, HTML5, PHP and JQuery. It is built entirely by the designers and developers. With static websites, you can have more freedom in designing layouts, every element of page can be twisted, allowing great precision in the designs you create. Static website is much faster to develop, reducing designers’ workload and makes them more affordable. Usually static websites are brochure type sites where content does not need to be changed. Updates, whenever required, will normally have to be done by developers.  

Pitfalls Of Static Websites:

• There is a latent complexity in updating. Even a minor error within the code can disrupt the whole layout of the web page.
• Additional costs are required to pay to web developers for modifications.
• Search engines won’t favor static websites with static content over a similar website that has its content regularly updated.

Benefits Of Static Websites:

• Pay lower development cost. Static websites are built in a less amount of time.
• They have simple web hosting requirements. They do not require a database to store their content in.
• Easy to build own website with WYSIWYG tools. Get various cost effective software packages designed to allow users to make their own websites visually appealing, without having much knowledge of HTML.

What is a CMS (Content Management System)?

A CMS is a dynamic website, designed to be scalable when it comes to content development and most importantly its features. Users are empowered to update content at their convenient time, without breaking the website layout. Frequent content updation is always possible with web pages, blogs, photo galleries and more. The of the most popular CMS platforms include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, in that order of popularity.  

Pitfalls Of A CMS Website:

• It needs a greater cost of web development. You would also require a professional CMS developer for making your website.
• To know how to work with CMS websites, you need to learn how it is structured so you can control naming, categories, menus, etc.
• Customers who have slower bandwidth may have to wait a little longer for their CMS website to load. CMS driven websites include media like dynamic content and images and if not optimized for web, can slow down a website, hampering user experience.

Benefits Of A CMS Website:

• As a user, you get full control over the content of your website without the need for knowledge of HTML, CSS or other languages. CMS customization can be done easily, whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it.
• It depends on what type of CMS you pick; there can be a huge collection of content types to work with beyond just text, photos, audio or video.
• It is SEO friendly. Websites that update content regularly gain more of an attention from search engines (like Google) and will often rank higher in search engine results (SER) pages that are an essential competitive aspect for business websites.

To Conclude

If you want a small website with content that probably won’t change much over time, you can go for a static website. In all other cases it is always preferable to go for a CMS driven website, for their scalability, SEO friendliness, and ease of updation.

5 Mobile Marketing Strategies For Your Ecommerce Brand

For eCommerce businesses and brands, mobile as a medium cannot be ignored anymore. Mobile marketing has become one of the most important marketing tools. The accessibility of Mobile has open up new opportunities for ecommerce marketers to reach out to customers anytime, anywhere.

In this blog, I’m going to share with you some effective mobile marketing strategies that you can use to increase traffic and sales for your online store.

1. Responsive Web Design

Responsive website design is the most important factor for an effective mobile marketing strategy. Never forget that your website is the most vital tool when it comes to communication or marketing, since it connects you with your audiences.

Responsive design can offer the best version of your eCommerce website or store for each device that customers use – from desktop to tablet to smartphone. If you are an owner of an eCommerce website then ensure your website is all set for various devices. Responsive design offers a user friendly experience to users. This is incredibly important because, it brings you to the next initiative of marketing your store.

2. Display Advertisements

The most effective strategy is to spread brand awareness and re engage your customers by displaying ads. With respect to mobile devices there are umpteen opportunities to leverage this medium and ensure the results of your efforts are as valuable as possible. By considering mobile usage throughout the design and creative process, you can ensure that your ads are optimized for small screens – short and transparent images with “buttons” which are easy to click from touch screen phones.

Present networks through Google offer advertising opportunities on mobile websites so that you can show your ads on those sites with your targeted demographics. Advertising with Google is always a wise choice; it is important to remember that the current era is of mobile ads. Through AdWords, ads can be displayed to market brands on devices like tablets, smartphones or desktops. With Google, you can always manage costs as you would like depending on your campaign requirements.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social Media marketing is an integral part of digital marketing campaigns. Majority of social media users use mobile devices; they are active on platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and others where there are great capabilities to market your brand and reach wider audiences. However, there are a lot of options available for marketers to advertise on! They can excellently drive traffic to the websites by using social media platforms as a marketing funnel.

Whether you are using usual brand promotion ad or reengaging customers with products, your objective of social media marketing must be clear. You should keep in mind that, your campaigns are viewed from mobile devices. So place your advertisement campaigns accordingly. For instance, if you are doing a video advertisement on Facebook, then by default that video ad plays silently on auto play, keep all essential information in the beginning of the video so that people don’t miss them out even if they don’t watch the full video and use a descriptive image to promote a video advertisement. This helps communicate the core message of that ad, you are trying to elicit.

4. Mobile-Friendly Email Marketing

E-mail content must be concise with easy to read text and short call to action liners. Subject line should not be cut off in inbox. With so many users on smartphones when they check their inbox, it is important that your campaigns are well optimized for mobile devices. Once you get the email address for potential customers, you can drive effective website traffic and boost sales.

Most of the buyers check their inbox from their mobile devices, not from desktops. Make sure your efforts don’t go in vain. Also ensure your email marketing is mobile friendly. For this, you can use responsive designs (just like responsive websites) for e-mails. Use easily readable fonts, compelling images, clickable icons & call to actions. E-mail content must be created with limited word counts.

5. Tailor Content for Micro-Moments

An important factor to consider when building mobile marketing strategies is your “Content”. Create content which can boost your brand’s digital presence. The solution must be served as per the needs of your users. Fulfilling your consumers’ goals through relevant content is essential to grow your brand. A great digital presence matters a lot in the industry today. These are micro moments and with the development of smart phones, content is ruling the digital era.

With content, you can be much quicker than before; you must deliver value and at the same time you should be relevant. So as to leverage “I-want-to-buy” moments, it is must to customize your content. You can form messages which surround the mind of your consumers, creating informal content that speaks to the unique requirements of your target audiences. Users don’t read long paragraphs on their mobiles. Your potential customers look for accurate replies and the simple way to find your products.

Set Off A Mobile Marketing Strategy

Mobile marketing is rapidly emerging as a core marketing focus for many brands. A smart strategy requires the right amalgamation of imagination and creativity with a data-driven mindset. Majority of them need a commitment to offering the best end users experience possible. A well produced mobile strategy can be a game changer. Without taking your audiences into consideration, better strategy can’t be built.

7 CMS Myths You Should Be Aware Of

The world of CMS has been growing tremendously in the past couple of decades, more so since the launch of open source CMS frameworks like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. What was once the expertise of few IT companies became abundant and free and led to the explosion in the web development market.

Companies nowadays have an easy way to create dynamic websites, add content and graphics and do revisions and editing at will. CMS simplifies the content management process and offers a framework for keeping everything well organized. Not only this, it also streamlines collaboration among staff members so that everyone can be on the same page from different locations.

Over the years, there have been a lot of misconceptions about CMS in general and individual CMS frameworks in particular. Here are 7 of the most common CMS myths that need to be dispelled right now.

Myth #1: You Can Make Text Updates In A CMS

Majority of people believe that using CMS, they can only make text updates. However, this couldn’t be far from the truth, since most of the platforms allow you to update almost any part of the website including text, images, videos, page layout, menu items, sidebar widgets, etc. Any good CMS offers lot of flexibility in terms of what you can add or edit which means you can create media rich textual content to reach to the wide audiences without any hassle.

Myth #2: Open Source CMS Systems Are Easier To Use Than Proprietary Systems

One of the worst myths is the notion that everything open source is free and easy. Just because the source code of a system is available to everyone doesn’t make it easy to use. There are hundreds of open source CMS systems and there are even more proprietary systems. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and have their own level of complexity. Some are easy, some are not. For example Drupal, even though an open source and popular CMS, is quite complex in its structure and difficult to use.

Myth #3: A CMS Needs Extensive Maintenance

Maintenance of a CMS is rather simple because of its flexible features and functionalities if you choose the right CMS for your organization. Any good content management system reduces task redundancy, tasks that are laborious and tedious are completed with a much greater level of efficiency and accuracy.

Myth #4: There Are Security Threats Involved in CMS

Security threat is a real problem for any online system that stores data, not just CMS. Content management systems like WordPress get a bad name for security attacks simply because of the sheer number of websites powered by WordPress. With more number, the chances of getting hacked is also more. To avoid hacking attempts, user authentications with strict password types along with other security measures go a long way. Any good CMS has extensive security parameters which safeguard your content and protect critical content assets powerfully.

Myth #5: Open Source CMS Systems Are Cheap

This one of the most enduring myths in the CMS world and the primary reason why everyone seems to go for open source CMS platforms. Sure, the open source software is free. But that’s not enough for you to get a workable website. For that you need someone to design and develop your website, you need a server to host the website and again, someone to maintain the website. All these involve real costs and sometime these can add up to a significant amount.

Myth #6: CMS Is Not For Small Businesses

Many people think that Content Management System is not a viable solution for a small businesses who don’t have enough content to update on their website. They would rather have a static website than a full fledged CMS. The truth is a good CMS system can benefit even the smallest of businesses. With the help of CMS, small businesses can streamline content placement, staff can make better use of their time while controlling content from a central location. As your company expands from small to big, you definitely need content management system which can simplify your business process and minimize those growing pain points. Not just that if you have a scalable content platform you can easily create content and use it for SEO and online marketing to get more traffic.

Myth #7: Using a CMS Means That You Don’t Need A Developer

It is true that All popular CMS platforms make website development quite easy and often don’t need development skills. But to customize a CMS as per your unique requirements and design style does require programming skills like any other system and you need a good CMS developer for that. CMS systems are standardized and have a huge range of features. You may not use all of these features or you may have unique requirements that are not covered in standard features.

Making A Final Choice Of CMS

When it comes to choosing the best CMS, it is essential to be aware of all the facts. There should be proper research and study before making a final choice for CMS. One should not be misled by a few myths and get carried away.

5 Reasons Why You Should Integrate Your Website & CRM

No matter how small or large an organization is, it needs a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system or software. Every organization needs to manage their contacts & keep the track of interactions with them. And a CRM system is really good at capturing customer data and making it accessible to every concerned stakeholder in the organization.

This is the reason why integrating your CRM system with your website is a very good idea. Since your website is the most easily accessible touch-point for your customers, it also acts as a great input source for gathering customer data. And if the website is integrated with a CRM system the whole process of converting enquiries to leads and following up on them can be easily automated.

In this context, given below are five specific reasons why you should integrate your CRM system with your website.

1.Single (Precise) Data Source

One of the biggest reasons of integrating your website with CRM is that it will save a lot of time of your staff (and other sales or contact systems), as you have just one single precise data source for each contact. Furthermore, because there is no manual element in adding the data to the CRM, there is less possibility of the errors being generated or duplicate records being made. When you extend this process to hundreds of thousands of contact data being received from your website forms, you will have a centralized and accurate data bank of potential customers, that you can confidently use for better sales conversions.

2.Reduce Administration Overhead

If your website and your CRM are not yet integrated then perhaps you’re spending far too much time by manually copying and pasting the most recent order, enquiry or other data from your website to the CRM, or worst of all, not fetching that data in your CRM at all.

With the automated integration between the two systems, you are reducing your administration overhead (and therefore saving both time and money) as all that manual copy and paste, or export and import, is made redundant. This results in increased productivity as it allows your staff to work on other tasks.

3.Better Profiling

A key advantage of CRM is the capability to profile customers or leads, to decide what they might purchase and how these customers or leads are useful to you. The more information about the customer you have, the easier it is to make a better profile and the more precise the data you feed in, the better the profile becomes.

By integrating your website with CRM, you will get more complete picture of your customers’ interactions with your organization, from initial enquiry to sales, communications and finally feedback. It provides you access to get more reliable and consistent information. You are informed about your customers in a better way and you’ve better knowledge of your customer’s behavior and their buying habits.

Better customer profiles let you to manage more effectively various target marketing campaigns and other actions, while the website integration allows you to follow the effectiveness of these campaigns online with the help of conversion rates and customer response.

4.Increase Sales

Improve your organization’s sales by integrating CRM with your website! Fundamentally it all boils down to one thing – more and true data leads to better profiles, which shows the way to better-quality leads which in turn leads to higher conversion rates.

Many organizations waste a lot of time and money on their websites, creating awesome content stuff and adding forms for potential customers to contact them. By integrating your website with your CRM, it streamlines the sales funnel, as immediately after the initial contact there are potential leads in the system, and it offers your sales team better data to work with, eventually leading to more sales.

5.Immediate access to up-to-date data

One of the advantages of integrating the website with your CRM is having direct access to the most recent data. Automated integration between your CRM & website happens real time. There’s no more wondering if yesterday’s or last week’s website orders have been appended to the CRM as yet. This is highly beneficial when it comes to talking to a customer with self-assurance, all the information of their latest purchase or other interaction is available to you, and which, in turn, contribute to improved customer satisfaction and increased sales.

In order to benefit from a seamless integration of the website and CRM system, B2B companies should discover new ways of engaging with their audience, enrich it through personalized content and efficiently manage relationships with them through various communication channels.

How to Integrate Data From SugarCRM to QuickBooks?

Ever Imagined Why Healthcare Sectors Integrate CRM With WordPress? Here’s Why!

Are you in the healthcare industry? Does your WordPress website leave you behind when it comes to customer satisfaction? This can be easily fixed by offering your WP customers the benefit of SugarCRM and WordPress integration in the form of a dedicated SugarCRM Customer Portal which they can access from their WP interface. Better and automated system, making their business function smoother and faster.

Huge changes are sweeping across the healthcare business and are dramatically impacting healthcare organizations. For successfully building brand loyalty and maintaining long-term relationships with customers it is must to retain and satisfy customers in the face of increasing competition. Providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies are focusing more on patient care and satisfaction. At the same time, patient expectations for accessibility of information and interactions have risen dramatically.

To adapt in this dynamic environment, organizations must be able to rapidly respond to changes in market conditions and customer requirements. The solution must be such that it enables you to share information across systems and organizations, helping to assure consistent, up-to-date information.

How Customer Portal Pro works!

“Customer Portal Pro” allows you to manage all of your customers, partners, dealers and affiliates. You can organize your customers using custom attributes and keep track of your compatibility with them. It works well because it’s easy, powerful and you can manage everything from the ‘admin’ section of your site.

This plugin can integrate Accounts, Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Meetings, Calls, Cases, Documents, Tasks, Notes of Sugar modules to your WP customer interface for their use.It will cut down your task of communicating with your WP customers and enables healthcare organizations to improve visibility, reduce complexity and remain quick in the face of massive change.

Modern healthcare systems must quickly evolve to meet the expectations of the connected users. It has been observed that costs have increased steadily irrespective to the medium of delivery, so ways have to be found to better, and cost efficiencies in delivering healthcare services. Customer Portal Pro enables healthcare sectors to go beyond this and build meaningful relationships with customers.